This very creepy horror movie is the feature debut for director Nate Ki, who demonstrates both a talent for suggesting rather than spelling out backstory as well as an unabashed streak of cruelty. Where most film-makers would hold back a bit and refrain from traumatising the audience with images of child abuse, suicide, self-mutilation and rape, Ki jumps right in. At least the editing doesn’t linger too long on the worst of it, but there’s still plenty to disturb the viewer with a film that seems to draw as much on the horror traditions of Cantonese cinema as well as western film-makers. For instance, the use of space evokes David Lynch in Lost Highway mode, while the community full of secrets and evil trope brings to mind Ari Aster’s Midsommar, but that might just be accidental.
The story starts with Heung Wing (Cantonese pop star Anson Ip-Sang Kong) getting a phone call summoning him home to Hong Kong because his mother (Bai Ling, on cracking form here) cut out her own tongue, tried to end her life, and has gone into a coma. After visiting her in hospital where there’s not much he can do, Wing heads to the flat where he grew up, a grimy high-rise building in a rough part of town. Memories of his childhood overwhelm Wing, especially his recollection of how he could see ghosts all around him as a child; it was an ability his single-parent mother feared and envied, prompting her to take him to a local temple to get the skill beaten out of him.
As the flashbacks to these horrific old days unfold, Wing observes the action helplessly from within the same space like a stage actor watching others act out flashbacks, and he becomes aware that things haven’t got much better. A little boy called Yu (Wesley Wong) seems to have the same skills and is, like the young Wing, justifiably full of fear and anxiety. Down the hallway are the Chungs (Tai-Bo and Yuk Ying Tam), an elderly couple who are excessively, unnervingly friendly in much the same way the old folks played by Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer were to Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby.
Ki goes big on revolving cameras and canted angles to unsettle throughout, while the lighting favours lots of jaundice-yellow tones for daylight scenes and lurid reds and blues at night. It’s all the better to make Bai Ling look terrifying when she takes to dressing up in a traditional Chinese opera costume with a sparkly headpiece and smeary, deranged make up. But seriously, it’s great to be reminded what a fine actor Bai is, as she draws on the intense carnality that’s always been a bit of a trademark but adds something tragic and deranged to the mix.
• Back Home is released on 27 October in UK cinemas.
